Chesapeake, Virginia, inmate Robert Lee Brock filed a $5 million lawsuit
against Robert Lee Brock -- accusing himself of violating his religious
beliefs and his civil rights by getting himself drunk enough to engage
in various crimes. He wrote, "I want to pay myself five million dollars
[for this breach of rights] but ask the state to pay it in my behalf since
I can't work and am a ward of the state."

Cody Judy, 27, charged by police with holding a Mormon Church official
hostage in Salt Lake City, told reporters in April to expect that God would
send earthquakes, eruptions, and pestilence in retaliation for his arrest
and that law enforcement officials would experience "baldness to your
heads and a curse on your private parts."

Jerusalem -- Ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders warned followers to keep
personal computers out of their homes, fearing the machines will be used
to watch forbidden television and videos.

Rabbis issued a warning letter titled "Protecting the Purity of
Our Children," which was published Monday in the religious daily Yated
Neeman, saying: "Naive parents think that computers are just an
electronic game, and don't know at all that today some computers are used
to screen films."

Some rabbis are considering banning computers outright as they have
done in the past with televisions and video players because they could
contain immodest or immoral images.

Another News of the Weird recurring theme involves the latest fatal
beatings in Africa of so-called sorcerers who are suspected of making
men's penises shrink or vanish with a mere handshake, in Dakar, Senegal.

Dr. William D. Cone, 71, went on trial on 19 counts of sexual assault
in West Plains, Moissouri, allegedly committed against a 37-year-old
female patient. According to the patient, Cone's "re-parenting
theory" of counseling (i.e., regressing the patient to the age when
parental flaws are prominent and then overcoming them) required him to
play the role of her mother and to allow her to suckle him to compensate
for her not having been breastfed.

The visitors' policy at Providence St. Vincent hospital in Portland,
Oregon, is similar to many: no more than 2 at a time in a patient's room,
2 waiting outside, 4 waiting in the lobby. The hospital ejected 60 Gypsies
who had come to help heal a 55-year-old woman.

Her nephew said he thought the Gypsies were exercising restraint by
not bringing along all 200 family members.

Jose and Maria Tercero filed a lawsuit against the Santa Fe, New Mexico,
School Board and various officials for unspecified injuries suffered by
their son, Jesse, from the act of carving a jack-o'-lantern last
October. The Terceros said forcing Jesse to carve the pumpkin violated
his religious freedom because he does not celebrate Halloween.

Carolyn J. Christian and her minister-husband filed a $160,000
lawsuit against a school that trains guide dogs after a blind man, learning
to use one of the school's graduates in a Bradenton, Florida, shopping
mall, stepped on the woman's toe, possibly breaking it.

A few days later, the Christians withdrew the lawsuit, citing public
outrage.

The German press agency Deutsche Presse Agentur reported in June that
a businessman in Cairo committed suicide because he was too heavily in
debt from support payments to his 26 children, 35 ex-wives, and four
current wives.

Bangkok (Reuters) -- A Thai man, depressed by his inability to keep
harmony among his three warring wives, jumped to his death from a hospital
building, police said Monday.

Police said Amornthep Kongkham, 26, from southern Samut Sakorn province,
jumped off the sixth floor of the hospital Saturday, within hours of an
earlier unsuccessful attempt to kill himself with poison.

Police said Amornthep killed himself after his wife refused to permit
two women he took home Friday to live with them, even though he said they
also were his wives.

In another incident, police said undergraduate Pisek Harnpanit plunged
to his death from the 12th floor of a Bangkok apartment block Sunday, apparently
because he was having difficulty meeting a thesis deadline.

Police in Abha, Saudi Arabia, threatened new parents Adbullah Mohammed
Ali, 55, and Hasna Mohammed Humair, 40, with arrest if they did not come
soon to the hospital and get their septuplets, who were born January 14
and almost all of whom no longer need hospitalization.

Hasna said she took a fertility drug only to regulate her menstrual
flow and had no idea this would happen.

Abdullah has two other legal wives and nine other kids, but is employed
as a cab driver and does not believe he can support the new ones.

In Dallas, Texas, lawyer Brian Loncar defended against his indictment
for bigamy by saying he did not believe his second marriage was valid because
the wedding was performed in Las Vegas by an Elvis Presley lookalike, that
it was a "phony deal." Countered the prosecutor, "Not necessarily.
Not in Las Vegas."

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in July that Jim Harnsberger,
40, a Republican party operative who founded the local Center for Family
Values, has been married five times and owes almost $20,000 in child support.

According to the newspaper, a former girlfriend said of Harnsberger,
"He said he would cut me up into little pieces and throw me into the
ocean and no one would ever know."

After filing a missing persons report in April on his wife, Leasa, Bruce
Jensen, 39, learned that Leasa was really feminine-looking Felix Urioste,
34, who had convinced Bruce to marry him in 1991 after a single sexual
encounter during which Urioste remained clothed.

Said the devout Mormon Jensen, to the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner,
"There's no way to describe this feeling [of learning he was married
to a man for almost four years]."

Oakland, California, Catholic Bishop John Cummins, facing a shortage
of clergy, reappointed Fr. John Gilmore as a parish priest despite knowing
that Gilmore secretly fathered two children in the 1980s.

Manila -- A Roman Catholic bishop announced that necklines on bridal
dresses were dipping dangerously low, and insisted that brides be more
discreet: "There are times when instead of saying 'the body of Christ,'
I am tempted to say 'Christ, what a body!'"

Preacher Abdul Talib Harun, 35, was sentenced to two years in prison
in Kuala Lampur for having 10 wives, which is six more than permitted under
Muslim law. All ten, with whom he has 17 children, strongly supported Harun
during his year-long trial. The four lawful wives were also sent to jail
for a month for permitting the illegal cohabitation.